They say that you can tell as much about what corrupt news organisations fear by what they don’t report on, as what they do. I have no idea who they are and indeed I may have even made them up but I generally go with what’s intuitive, fill in the blanks and attribute my twisted logic to a shadowy they.

On the evening of the 21st of January 2016 the regional BBC news program, North West Tonight, didn’t report that Trafford “Tories model” Council unanimously voted to reaffirm their ban on fracking choosing instead to run items on a middle aged couple introducing a Tuk Tuk to Chester’s transport system and an award winning chippy in Crewe which will hopefully confirm to readers that I couldn’t possibly be making this shit up.

Not only did the TORY led Council vote 56 to 0 with 4 off fishing to reaffirm their fracking ban they also agreed to approach the Oil & Gas Authority to remove the recently announced PEDL for the area and more importantly to directly challenge the Secretary of State for Energy Climate Change effectively going to war with their own party over the Tory’s flagship energy policy. Trafford Council are one step short of calling themselves Naomi Kleins Earth Warrior Army and setting off in a campervan convoy to man a Community Protection Camp at the #UptonBlockade against the evil iGas. But according to the BBC this isn’t news.

Perhaps at this point I should provide a bit more background information for those less frack aware. A PEDL or more precisely a Petroleum Exploration and Development License is given to fracking companies, ironically by the Department of Energy and Climate Change. They’re drawn up in huge blocks of land meaning that all a fracker has to do is negotiate access with your freehold owning neighbour and you can suddenly find that you’ve got a towering fracking rig at the end of your garden replacing the former glorious views of the Pennines or herds of Wildebeest sweeping majestically across Knutsford Common.

It’s important to mention at this point that the Borough of Trafford was already subject to a PEDL but that particular tranche of land was mostly based around an already heavily industrialised part of the hood. It’s also important to mention that Trafford Borough Council subsequently passed a motion banning fracking until it can be proven safe essentially banning it forever as the process has been proven to be highly dangerous on multiple levels.

Fast forward to December 2015 and the latest round of PEDL awards and vast areas of Greater Manchester and North Cheshire have now been sold off. Most importantly the entirety of Trafford Borough’s hugely affluent Altrincham, Timperley, Bowden and Hale famous for being the residential choice of Manchester United football stars such as Roy Keane and Ryan Giggs. This is quite literally a whole other ball game.

Quite obviously spooked by this development one of the very first things that Trafford Council does in 2016 is to call a meeting to discuss this development and reaffirm its ban on fracking. They’re most likely aware of a poll conducted in the Manchester Evening News that showed that 97% of Mancunians are against fracking, bearing in mind that it’s almost impossible to get 97% of Mancs to agree upon anything.

However, even though the new PEDL affects hundreds of thousands of people in the UK’s third City the BBC somehow decided that this wasn’t newsworthy and that a chippy was. Now although as a Northerner I find it hard to argue about the reportage of a top drawer “chippeh” I would have thought that a quarter of a million South Mancunians would have appreciated being told that their Council was prepared to go to war with Westminster and their own party to try and stop them and their families from being poisoned and their currently booming property prices being reduced to the equivalent value of a 3 bed semi in Raqqah.

The BBC have form when it comes to fracking, especially regional BBC. They’ve repeatedly smeared folk who protest fracking as “professional protesters” or “out of towners” minimising and most often ignoring the fact that anti fracking Protectors have huge local support. They’ve attempted divide and rule tactics reporting on an incident of apparent violence towards a local Woman by anti fracking protesters which was not only shameful but highly dangerous.

In the meantime Judge Sanders has slammed the extreme violence that was routinely meted out to locals and Protectors from all over the UK and the World by the most brutal “policing” at Barton Moss, the shameful #UKfrackingscandal The BBC reported upon none of this, well, they reported that accusations of police brutality had been made by sending their reporter out for a lovely day with the police to report back that everything was lovely. There’s footage of it on YouTube. It would be comedy gold if it wasn’t so wtf?!?

Only recently during the latest anti fracking community blockade at Upton the BBC have done their very best to make the Community Protection Camp look completely detached from the local community failing even to report that a local Councillor was arrested at the eviction of the camp by iGas and their henchmen.

In the meantime they wheel out their procession of “Professors”, one to tell us that the worst that we can expect from fracking is a bit of bother on the school run to just recently when a “Professor” stated that fracking has a very small earthquake risk when Oklahoma has already experienced hundreds of earthquakes this year alone during an ongoing earthquake epidemic as folk there pray that the big one isn’t next. I recorded the BBC North West Tonight program that he said this on just to replay it over again to make sure that he really did say this.

It’s against this backdrop that you have to judge the BBC’s non reporting of the Trafford Council decision, the non reporting of the New York State fracking ban, the Oklahoma earthquakes and the two months that it took for them to finally report the Porter Ranch catastrophe in Los Angeles. Especially don’t expect a Panorama expose on fracking any time soon.

When presented with their glaring own goal over the non reporting of the Trafford decision the BBC amateurishly wriggled and struggled. Either that or a cleaner started manning their Twitter feed getting into a hoo ha with folk. If you’re going to work for state TV you have to be very thick skinned about it and churn out the bullshit with your head firmly down, don’t engage with people whatever you do otherwise it all goes bandy. BBC’s argument was that they’d already reported the Trafford Council fracking ban from way back when. Other peoples argument was that the latest PEDL now affects hundreds of thousands of Mancunians and that the Council found it serious enough to gather and vote unanimously to oppose it.

In the Twitter exchange it was remarked that what with the BBC’s staunch defence of having been so extensive in their fracking coverage recorders were being set that very night for their reporting on Bolton Council declaring that fracking will never be allowed on Council land and would be opposed.

Of course this never featured on BBC North West Tonight. Instead there was an item about a Goat that gets taken for a walk on a lead.

….there was no report on the Bolton Council fracking shun.

The BBC is one of the most insidiously evil organisations in this land because it feeds on the trust of ordinary Brits who still, in their thousands, implicitly trust it and it could be easy to get frustrated with them but it’s pity that should be reserved. Due to the obvious restrictions placed upon them they can’t report on one of the greatest stories in the storied history of these isles. How after an industry had rampaged its way across vast swathes of America and Australia it was stopped here, in “Jerusalem”.

Stopped in its tracks by an army of “crusties and colonels” as somebody wrote. People from all walks of life working tirelessly against the multi billion dollar oil and gas industry with oiled up politicians and police that will beat you out of the way if you dare protest. It’s a story that’s now entered British legal history, British folklore and will travel down through time but the BBC in all it’s love of a cheesy schmaltzy community story can’t even report on it which is deliciously circuitously karmic.

This vague contextualiser hasn’t reported back from the glorious anti fracking victory at Preston as I’ve been parading through the streets of Lancashire on horse back spreading the glad tidings. I’ve considered the possibility of going door to door and collecting £10 in tribute from folk for stopping fracking whilst they were on their arse watching “Corrie” but I’d either get punched in the face or they’d most likely not have the first clue what fracking was.

Fact of the matter is though that 3 weeks ago I was a scaremongering tree hugging agent of Vladimir Putin looking to freeze Grannys to death. Today I stand on the summit of Mount Vindication planting the flag of told you so.

Some folk are bleating on about how “it won’t stop ‘em” and “they’ll appeal it, we haven’t won”.

Get stuffed. We smashed ‘em!!!

We somehow managed to persuade a load of Councilors under the most unbelievable pressure to vote to shitcan fracking when the easiest thing in the World for them to do would have been to let it sail through. The pressure that those Councillors were under is difficult to imagine, something akin to the Dentist scene in Marathon Man meets Alexis Tsipras stuck in a lift with Christine Lagarde.

They’ve been building entire fracking colleges and laying serious amounts of infrastructure. Dave and his fossil fuel deranged government are all out for shale. That Preston decision was like someone rocking up on the starting grid of the British Grand Prix in front of all the dignitaries and saying that the race was being canceled for safety reasons.

The decision to halt fracking in Lancashire was beyond enormous.

The other massive victory was a victory of people power.

How many times did we hear, “oh you won’t change owt..the government will do what the government will do”..the usual response from folk so beaten down that the status quo seems like an insurmountable wall that can never be overcome. The reality of the situation is that the phenomenal decision at Preston was brought about by a tiny percentage of the populace who would be directly affected by fracking.

A small committed group of highly motivated individuals took on and beat the multi billion dollar oil & gas industry and whipped them on a shoe string budget. When the main stream media attempted to smear anti fracking campaigners as being in the pay of Moscow the general cry went up..if only and where’s our rubles?!?

Future social historians will pour over how such an improbable victory could have possibly been pulled off but I can save them the bother. We won because right was so obviously and firmly on our side and the horrific results of not winning were unthinkable. As was proven, we really didn’t need the whole County to be mobilised against fracking but the frackers must surely be factoring in what they would be facing if they really start to stir folk up or what would have happened if we hadn’t had their nonsense stopped.

Subsequently, and to prove us completely right the Netherlands has now banned fracking for being highly dodgy and the even dodgier Defra have finally released that report that somebody with raging OCD and a black marker pen got hold off and went all 1950’s East Berlin on. It turns out that fracking is a bag of shyte and will crush your property value if situated near you. A figure of a 7% drop was randomly tossed out there for any idiot who truly believes that “must have a frackpad at the bottom of the drive” is a feature of anyones family home purchasing criteria. I’d strongly recommend biting the hand off anyone that’ll discount your property by under 25% for it now being in a radon soaked lorry filled toxic industrial zone.

So, will Cuadrilla just pack up and go away? (*Written prior to news of the appeal) You’ve got to think of these frackers as the modern day equivalent of the Luftwaffe. They won’t just go away. They’ll regroup and try and pick on an easier prey. The media campaign has already begun about how the good folk of North Yorkshire welcome fracking and thats no doubt where they will next try and tear communities apart.

There remains the possibility that the filthy frackers will have Westminster bypass the Lancashire decision* but that would raise the fracking issue to a whole new level and we would be in completely uncharted waters. International human rights lawyers are now investigating the mass human rights abuses that go hand in hand with fracking and the appalling lack of democracy surrounding the imposition of such a dodgy industry are there for all to see. Sure, they can appeal the Lancashire decision but exactly what kind of look is that?

In the meantime the frackers have taken a fearsome blow in Lancashire, a place that they entered being confident in gaining their “social license” and now stand on the precipice of being driven out of the County Palatine and possibly out of business completely.

In a pivotal moment in British history, Lancashire County Council will tomorrow start the decision process in which they’ll decide whether to get on board the Planet ravaging collapsing Ponzi scheme known as fracking and go all chips in on the game of fossil fuel stranded assets roulette.

This half arsed conduit of tomfruitery will provide a live rolling blog of correspondents, characters and reportage from the very heart of what will most likely resemble a mash up of Woodstock, Carry on Anti Fracking and a Barnum & Baileys three ringed Circus.

Tomorrow a panel of local politicians who rule over a land, much of it at sea level, will decide whether to proceed with a process that will directly lead to a huge increase in sea levels. To find out about more stuff that you just can’t make up keep in touch all week via this blog or on Twitter following the hashtags #DontFrackLancs and #FrackStopsHere

In the meantime in the true spirit of how any Northern live blog should be launched…I’m off to bed…big day tomorrow 🙂

Tuesday 23rd June 10.00am

Gloriously beautiful day in Lancashire today where the sun is truly shining on the righteous as a tasty crowd of Earth protectors gather outside of the County Hall. The legendary Anne Power is on point today….

….and the message is being sent loud and clear to the men in grey suits in the building behind….

….MancunianSpring managed to snag a word with a lad giving evidence to the Council regarding the huge risk that fracking presents to the incredible ecology of the Fylde. He said that by the time he’s finished there won’t be a dry eye in the house and that if indeed the Councillors do approve fracking they’ll feel like they’ve agreed to have a Zoo napalmed.

The differences are clear. Inside County Hall are a set of crusty old men chewing over the imposition of a dirty technology from an age we’re fast moving beyond. Outside are, as Owen Patterson put it, people in exciting clothing demanding and fighting for a cleaner brighter future…happy days……

Tuesday 23rd June 12.00pm

Mr Frack is now rampaging around the streets of Preston spreading fear panic and generally clunking folk on the back of the head with his extraordinarily huge fracking arms…

All quiet on the County Hall front, no white smoke from the roof or Cuadrilla execs jumping from the windows but the bagpipes have turned up 🙂

Tuesday 23rd June 1.30pm

The beautiful people have formed a human chain around the entirety of County Hall…

…and something completely Lancastrian has just happened. A bridal party emerged from the hall. The bride was given a Lancashire Nannas feather duster “honour guard”. The bride completed her procession under the guard, turned around, hoiked up her wedding dress to reveal a dazzling set of black and yellow “Frack Off” undertrolleys!?! The entire bridesmaid posse were also rocking black and yellow hair ribbons. Never been more proud to be Lancastrian than today 🙂

23rd June Evening

It all went quiet post 1.30pm cos my phone battery went dead just after and I was having such a great time at NanaFest that I couldn’t be arsed chugging back to Nero’s for my 6th cup of coffee and a bit of leccie.

What an inspirationally beautiful day. Lancashire County Hall hasn’t rocked to a drum beat like that since the Scottish invading armies rolled through in the 1700’s and funnily enough the saltire and pipes were both present amongst a kilt clad crew of Scots anti frackers.

I keep prattling on about the contrast between the men in grey suits and corporate lawyers inside County Hall and the people in “exciting clothing” outside partly due to it being starkly apparent but mostly because this shows the fundamental difference between the “all out for shale” system and the folk wanting an cleaner alternative future.

Outside were the young and the old, the suited and the fairy dust booted, cool as you like kids scootering around doing drive by shirt front stickering, smiling Nanas asking if you were alright chuck and high fiving honking car drivers, babes in pushchairs, old fellas in mobility scooters and a lad with a sparkler flaring fracking derrick on his bonce?!?

Inside the building were old men in suits listening to nonsensical arguments from the corporatocracy as to why the folk outside should be poisoned in a whole variety of ways purely for greed when there are a million better ways of doing things as being demanded by those about to be poisoned outside. Inside the building were corporate stooges repeating the same old lies and having their 4 minute diatribes drift off into the surreal at times due to the complete lack of belief and conviction in their own nonsense. Outside were people so utterly convinced and passionate about their case that many have dedicated large portions of their lives to stopping the scandal that is fracking and 95% of them could out debate Francis Egan on fracking including most of the kids.

There’s another huge gulf between the crusty old folk in County Hall and the true “Lancastrians” outside and that’s their perception of who anti fracking folk are and the reality of who we are.

Lancashire cops were extremely courteous and well mannered as you’d expect from any true Lancastrian but there were so many of them around that you’d have thought that the West Ham “Inter City Firm” were about to arrive in Preston. There were perhaps 100 police to stand around and try not to dance essentially babysitting the Lancashire Nanas and their Children. Whilst not wanting to cry at such a waste of money it also shows the mindset of the folk behind the ordering of such a ridiculous level of over policing. After all of these years they still don’t get anti frackers.

After the countless solidarity event gatherings of thousands of anti fracking folk most often with zero police presence they still don’t get how peaceful we are. Go through hour after hour of YouTube video from Barton Moss and you won’t find a single instance of any form of aggression towards the police or indeed any conviction for assault in the hundreds of pointless court cases after the hundreds of pointless arrests. There’s no need to resort to violence when the strength of your case is so compelling and thoroughly proven. The only violence ever used is by the frackers and as they say, if you have to use violence to push an idea then your ideas are crap.

To complete an inspirational day outside County Hall, and as if the Gods of exciting clothing had made it so, Vivienne Westwood quite literally swanned in and declared all politicians criminals until the people say that they’re not and there was not a Lancashire Nana in sight not in agreement with that and as they say, your Nana knows best.

edit

This is the happy bride who found out just days before her County Hall wedding that the joint was being cuddled by anti frackers and decided to theme her wedding as anti fracking…

LCC has received three commentaries from expert witnesses, myself included, which are at least in part critical of your Officer Report published on Monday 15 June 2015. The two others (that I am aware of) are from Professor Stuart Haszeldine (Edinburgh University) and Dr Damien Short (London University).

Professor Haszeldine’s report is especially significant in that he backs up what I have been saying for some time about the risks to groundwater. It may also go some way to counterbalancing, with solid evidence from an internationally known expert, the outrageous ad hominem attack on myself that you permitted the DCC to be subjected to yesterday, in the four-minute diatribe from Dr Nick Riley.

These three reports (which, for the avoidance of doubt, I attach herewith) have missed your arbitrary deadline of Friday 19 June, but are too important to be omitted from the body of information put to the Development Control Committee. In any case my own report was submitted on the Sunday evening of 21 June, and was therefore available for you at the start of the working week on Monday morning. I know of other instances where late submissions have been made in good faith in such circumstances, and they have always been accepted.

As you will be aware these three reports are critical of the LCC planning process. If you choose not to include them for DCC’s consideration you may open yourself further to the risk of Judicial Review. If you feel that the DCC has too much on its plate already then the appropriate measure to be taken is to adjourn or postpone the debate. You have already extended the time available to the applicant for consideration of late information. Not to do so for objectors, particularly expert witnesses, would be further evidence of prejudice in favour of the applicant.

I would be grateful if you could confirm that my request for these documents to be included will be carried out.

Yours sincerely

David Smythe
[Emeritus Professor of Geophysics, University of Glasgow]
Ventenac en Minervois, France

The Council is currently considering the implications of this gargantuan Professor off……

Wednesday 24th June 3.00pm

The Councillors have yet to return from lunch..there’s speculation that they may have gone to Manchester for it. In the meantime a list of the harmed of Pennsylvania has appeared on the wall at the entrance to County Hall…

Thursday 25th June 2.00pm

As predicted its utter chaos in Preston 😦

The decision whether to collapse the property prices around the Preston New Road site has been postponed until next Monday. Did I say collapse the property prices rather than fracking? That’s in order to balance out the absolute nonsense coming out of the Council chamber that toxic fume belching frackpads will have a minimal impact regarding sightliness?!?

Perhaps estate agents have given evidence that one of the first things that buyers of family homes demand are sweeping views of the local frackfield. Stooges and the ill informed can lay claim to whatever they want but the market never ever lies. The impact regarding sightliness of frackpads will not only NOT be minimal, it will be measured in the millions of pounds in collapsed property values. Dear oh dear what Planet do these people live on?

The County Hall hoo ha gets even worse. There have been secret meetings, Councilors almost breaking down and more “power brokers” leaning on people than a Greek/EU debt meeting. This is exactly the kind of rodeo clown show that will be coming to 60% of the UK and with 18,126 written objections to fracking submitted to LCC with only 217 in support you can understand why the term “social license” doesn’t even get a mention any more. The dirty frackers would embarrass themselves even more than they already have if they were to ever mention social license again

With one of the themes of the week having been folk from areas that have been fracked pleading on their knees not to accept fracking in the UK the heroic Ian Crane will be Preston premiering his film about the misery that good honest Queensland folk have had to endure in Australia. You know, if I had a former car owner telling me that the thing was a death trap I’d probably be quiet wary but then can you ever imagine an automobile manufacturer trying to sell any vehicle in the UK with a highly questionable safety record…wouldn’t happen would it?

Thursday 25th June 5.00pm

This just in…it looks is if a decision on the dark fate of pretty little Roseacre may be made today…

Thursday 25th June 5.20pm

Godzilla’s application to turn Roseacre into an HGV filled industrial zone has been unanimously voted against because fracking in the heart of English communities is a really really stupid idea…more details on just how stupid an idea it was later…

Friday 26th June

Nowt happened today. I’m guessing because if things had carried on any longer folk my have started to faint.

To sum up the week..a huge crowd turned up, some from as far afield as the Isle of Wight..enough folk to completely surround the huge County Hall building…

…academics tried to step in and tell Lancashire County Councillors not to be so bloody stupid…

…the atmosphere was often tense outside of County Hall with the pressure etched on peoples faces…

…but the pressure was just as much inside the building with Godzilla CEO Francis Egan wishing that he’d joined a different Circus when he was a kid…

…don’t allow yourself to feel sorry for the back scuttler though, he’s upsetting our senior citizens and that’s just not on…

…local support was fantastic with a non stop cavalcade of honking car support…

…and in typical British style what could have been a sombre day was turned into a carnival…

…and would you believe it?!? Even the Police couldn’t resist the carnival of life mood forming into an impromptu drum corps…

…because they were obviously feeling the love…

…and so on we roll to Monday when the Preston New Road decision is due to be made. This rotten corrupt “government” of ours wants Lancashire to lead the way with fracking and we most certainly are. We’re showing the rest of Britain how to protest against it, how to fight it tooth and nail and how to make it perfectly clear that it’s completely unacceptable and unwanted in our communities.

See you Monday 🙂

Monday 29th June 10.00am

…and the sickening terrorising beat goes on as another perfectly idyllic British community finds out today whether their lives are going to be turned upside down.

In the meantime, as is the way with fracking, the bad news just continues to drip out of America.

Yet another study has found an increase in birth defects and a whole array of infant abnormalities including spikes in cancer rates. There are many abhorrent things about the imposition of fracking in the UK but probably the most perverse is the fact that the precautionary principle just doesn’t seem to apply even though the process will be situated directly in our communities among our loved ones. Referring back to the car analogy, Its inconceivable that a foreign automobile model with a proven dangerous history would ever be allowed to be sold in the UK market let alone families being forced to drive it.

In a week when political incompetence and stupidity could well bring down the whole of the eurozone, UK citizens are yet again having to battle to stop the political elites from harming them. Thankfully another huge crowd has turned out in Preston and even if the grey old men in County Hall do decide to poison their own communities the fighting folk of Lancashire continue to show the 60% of our Country slated for fracking just how to fight it…

Monday 29th June 11.15am

BREAKING NEWS….FRACKING REFUSED IN LANCASHIRE!!!!

They even got told to stuff their seismic arrays where the fracking flares don’t shine. More to follow…obviously…including loads of crowing and raucous rounds of LANCASHIRE LA LA LA LANCASHIRE LA LA LA 🙂

Monday 29th June 12.30pm

You’d think that it was a no brainer that a local authority had decided not to poison its citizens, befoul their countryside, flatten them with HGV’s and crash their property prices but that doesn’t take into account the immense pressure that Lancashire County Councilors were under from a totally corrupt industry and morally bankrupt government. Fracking in Lancashire was considered such a “done deal” that vast amounts of money have already been spent on infrastructure even including the building of a dedicated fracking college. Then the people stepped in.

On the one side we have an industry with a long history of getting exactly what it wants, with bottomless pockets and the full unadulterated backing of the UK govt to the extent that Dave consistently repeated that he’s “all out for shale”. The industry was working from a proven playbook operated countless times over many years in Pennsylvania, Texas, Ohio etc and they ran every play in the book. They lied about how fracking had been going on in the UK for decades, they lied about jobs, they lied about “cheap gas”, raised the false spectre of the “nasty Russians” and downplayed every single fracking application as “just a test well” and that they “wouldn’t be fracking”. Some of the lies were so pernicious and so thoroughly media pimped that they were still being repeated in the Lancashire County Hall last week?!? This is because the frackers had a completely uncritical and compliant media (especially the odious BBC) to do their bidding. They employed an army of shill Professors/Frackademics whose University names will now go down in history with a stain that will be very hard to remove. They employed legions of internet stooges to flood online newspaper comments sections with how wonderful fracking was and to attack and smear anyone opposed to it. They funded astroturf (fake grassroots) organisations to try and fool local folk into thinking that there was a degree of local support for the industry and finally they poured thousands upon thousands of pounds of bribe money into local community projects/groups in order to ingratiate themselves with the citizenry.

In opposition to all of this was a tiny amateur army of what was to become known as “Crusties and Colonels” operating on a shoe string budget and the truth and as it should be, the truth won.

Don’t for one second think that this is over because fracking has never been about democracy, especially local democracy. There’s the Infrastructure Act to consider where I’ve yet to have it confirmed to me that it’s not actually now against the law to oppose fracking being as the maximisation of the extraction of our nations fossil fuel reserves is now enshrined in law. Eric Pickles had a right to overturn any local decisions made regarding the rejection of fracking and I’m assuming that once they’ve scoured the galaxy and located Jabba the Hut to step into his shoes the situation will remain the same.

So where do we go from here?

Well first of all us Lancastrians thank from the very bottom of our red rose hearts every single person throughout the UK and way way beyond for anything that you’ve done to help us in our hour of need whether you’re a Scottish Highlands tweeter, an Isle of Wight Preston demo attender or a New York State Congressman writing letters of appeal to our County Council. The support at times has been overwhelming and will never be forgotten. Standing against the above mentioned forces was near impossible. Standing against them alone would most likely have been impossible xoxo

As for the next step, I’m not entirely sure myself, but I do know that we are now unstoppable and that a complete UK wide ban on fracking brought about by us is inevitable 🙂

Whilst it’s suddenly become “the glorious 12th” when it comes to shooting the messenger you’ve got to take your hat off to Pope Francis. I don’t care that its kinda in the same ball park as Sepp Blatter telling you how to run your local FA, Frankie has so far played a solid innings and he nails it, the further mining of fossil fuels is morally repugnant, eco system trashing and must end now unless we’re hell bent on subjecting countless more people to turmoil and death.

It’s a moral paradigm shifter.

The game is up for the fossil fuel freaks, they can carry on doing what they’re doing but they’ve had whatever thread bare moral rug they had pulled out from under them. The Pope in his encyclical has clearly painted the battle lines between “inspiring Earth protectors” and mindless Planet plunderers so folk now have to decide which camp they’re in, this is why he aimed his canonical canon at the whole World’s populace rather than just his flock.

So that’s both the moral and the fiscal argument against fracking won then. You have to be economically and markets illiterate to invest in the fossil fuel bubble when even Mark Carney of the Bank of England is screaming out that 80% of known fossil fuel reserves have to stay in the ground to avoid climate meltdown. You’d have to show a whole new level of steaming ignorance to back massively expensive energy extraction methods that will take years to implement just when the cost of producing cheap and unlimited renewable energy is coming crashing down and getting ever more efficient and widespread with every passing day.

These fossil fuel flunkys are like shore wandering Neanderthals risking life and limb collecting shellfish on wave battered rocks when all they have to do is wait a while for the inevitable tide to go out.

Talking of species that no longer walk this land Lancashire County Council meet next week to decide whether the sea level areas of the County Palatine should dig up more fossil fuels to contribute to climate meltdown and inexorably rising sea levels.

You really can’t make this shit up. It’s the nearest that you’ll ever get to a Lemming town hall meeting.

Here’s something else that you can’t make up. Officials at the Council have already concluded that having fracking rigs all over the joint won’t have a detrimental effect on tourism to the area. This is most likely because they’ve discovered that families include on their tick list of holiday “must haves”..must have sweeping views of the HGV filled toxic emission belching frackfields or..must have ram jammed traffic jams that include radio active water pissing tankers. There’d be every likelihood that social services would get involved if you started camping with your kids in an industrial estate but officials at Lancashire County Council have conculded that in one of the most competitive tourist markets on the Planet, having a routinely banned and globally controversial process sited on the Fylde won’t adversely affect tourism.

Preston where the Council is seated can be looney tunes though and next week it won’t be just a place that you go through to get somewhere nice (East Lancs author 🙂 )…the World and his Wife would appear to be descending upon the historic City, there’s even a rumour sweeping the hills of the red rose County that the Pope’s going to put in an appearance….

***possible sighting of Pope***

….told you it was looney tunes.

With the collapse of the ecological, fiscal and moral arguments for fracking and it having been generally demonstrated to be really rather shyte and eminently ban worthy we find out next week whether the system is that morally and democratically bankrupt that approval for the abhorrent activity of extreme mining in our communities sails through anyway.

“Ohhhh Francis of Assisi,
He is the fookin Pope,
He is an Argentinian,
He fills us all with hope,
He loves renewables,
Thinks fossil fuels are lame,
And when we stop the frackers,
We’ll sing this song again!!!”

We’ve currently got an Englishman living up a tree to save his land from extreme energy and my dear old Mum’s got her hate on for our kid Nicola Sturgeon and both of those things need to stop right now!!!

Being part Jute upon a recent trip down South to my Southern heimat I found my sweet hearted Ma bad mouthing the female Ghandi of our time, Nicola Sturgeon?!?

Here’s what’s happened.

My Pops is an ex Shop Steward. He was left wing. He always bought the Mirror and the Mail to get a balanced view. A while back, for whatever reason, he stopped buying the Mirror, he’s in his mid 70’s now and perhaps it’s right what they say about “the older you get the more right wing you become”. So the old fella has had nothing but reading the Mail for a few years now. Factor in also that my folks are of that generation who believe that the BBC is some form of sanctified distributor of truth and you have what’s been happening to millions of my fellow Engerlanders. They really have done the full job on these people and I think that it’s important that our Scottish brothers and sisters understand that. I know that you ken anyway because you obviously had the whole BBC/msm “Project Fear” experience and are fully wise to the corruption of it all but it’s so vitally important that we properly address this idiotic nose lead mind set and challenge the crap out of it. If I use that experience with my folks as a litmus test I think that we’ve got our work cut out but descending into any more cross border fear and loathing nonsense isn’t an option. Anyone with even a brief understanding of the violent past relationship between England and Scotland would stow that idiocy immediately but we live in times of a beast in its death throes and it’ll spit poison and take down whoever it can with it.

Now the good news. Many many English have been through a 5 year boot camp with these Tory weirdos. There are a MULTITUDE of battling grassroots organisations all over the place.

This brings me back to our lad up a tree.

We’ve fought fracking to a virtual standstill in England and have been doing for a number of years now. Frack Free Lancashire is one of the most successful grassroots organisations that the North West has probably seen since the days of The Chartists or Suffragettes and organisations like Frack Free Ryedale and Frack Free Nottinghamshire are just about to come into their own. We’ve always opposed fracking because, well, it’s really crap..but we’ve always also championed a better way and most importantly loads of English young’ins are involved in what is essentially family based community resistance so the future’s very bright.

Frack Free Notts this past weekend

There are indeed many of my fellow English that will swallow any old bilge, there always will be in any land, and we haven’t had the two years intense political engagement that Scots have had but what we lack in over arching political organisation we make up for in young ballsy getting stuck in opposition to things that are patently wrong. Combine Scottish grassroots organisation with English community action networks and that’d be quite the brew.

In the meantime we’ve got Gary living up a tree at a site where the frackers iGas want to drill for coal bed methane..a handful of metres from the sacred River Mersey and a few hundred yards from Chris Packham’s fave Nature Reserve, Woolston Eyes. Our Gary’s not having that, or at least he’s not having that until he’s gained more local awareness of what’s happening at Warrington or laid a couple of eggs in his tree nest. Gary doesn’t want to live in a tree, he’s not a bird, he’s got a perfectly nice home just down the road that doesn’t sway like HMS Victory’s mast in a gale. He doesn’t want camera crews filming him with food being hoisted up to him, he’s not some form of weird human addition to Springwatch, although he wouldn’t turn down a visit from Michaela Strachan. What Gary wants to do is to be able to tell his story…to anyone that will listen…he’s up a tree…there’s not a lot on up there….

This story will be subject to the usual national hush hush main stream media blackout that we’ve always had with the nationally significant process called fracking but we’ve got our own media now haven’t we……

DM @MancunianSpring on Twitter for a chinwag with our lad up a tree…he’s given us his phone number hehe #SaveWoolstonEyes

I did sit my folks down and over a 3 hour period put them right on Nicola and how the Scots don’t really want to fashion cabers out of Westminster Hall woodwork and toss them around Parliament Green..just yet 🙂

We wrote to the front burner last year asking if he’d drop a line to the Geological Society on behalf of the people of the old Lancashire coal mining areas currently facing a good fracking. Unsurprisingly folk in Wigan (his constituency), Salford, Warrington (I could go on) are concerned that some complete lunatics want to regularly conduct huge rock shattering depleted Uranium tipped explosions right underneath ancient coal mine workings that riddle the whole region. Andy Burnham, to his credit, got back to us and confirmed that he had done as we had requested and written to the venerable Society of Jurassic junkies…since then…nada…even with a Secretary chase up…it all went as quiet as a Bickerstaffe pit shaft……

Of course it’s possible that the Rock Squad are in the middle of some form of Flintstones Fest going back to back through movie and TV series episodes or perhaps there’s something geological afoot. Perhaps the 3,800,000 UKippers have popped over to our East coast, powered up outboard motors, the British Isles is currently being propelled away from Europe and the Geologists are keeping their heads down about such crazy quasi tectonic oddness? Who knows but its mighty disturbing that we still don’t know in the North West if there are soon to be a prophesised 4000 holes in Blackburn, Lancashire.

Andy will most likely win the Labour leadership, he’s a hottie, but he needs to get his priorities right and remember the folk whose interests he should hold dearest to his heart otherwise how can he ever be trusted to have the entire nations interests at heart if he couldn’t even manage that for his own back yard, his own people.

We don’t even fish with dynamite around our parts due to the possibility of a mine subsidence, we take our kids to Pennington and Wigan flashes for weekends out permanently reminding us that HUGE mine subsidences CAN happen in our area, find out please Mr Burnham whether there is any possibility that as a direct or indirect result of fracking any form of mine workings subsidence will occur.

Part of the Geological Societies mission statement is to expedite an auspicious customer liasonship in order to become a market leader in bollocks..oh, no it’s not, I zoned out into the average corporate mission statement there, no, the Rock Squad’s raison d’etre is “facilitating the communication of new facts and ascertaining what is known in their science” so please Mr B, tell these people to come out from whatever rock they’re hiding under and to ascertain whether using some of the most powerful explosions known to man under our homes could lead to getting a new cellar.